The Effects of Packaging

The article really does show how much packaging (amongst other things) affects the consumer's desire to buy a product. There is a saying that "A person is smart, but people are dumb" or something to the affect. This Swaddle Scandal would probably be a good example of this saying as the masses bought into a single individual's scheme to sell false organic goods.

Part of this would probably have to do with the belief that if something is "organic" it is automatically superior to any foods that were produced and protected through the use of pesticides or whatever other chemicals and mass production methods are used. This individual saw this and, like many (myself included), figured that no one really knows the difference between organic and normally produced food products and the fact that this went unnoticed for so long proves it to be true - more or less. It was a brilliant plan that came about from a mix of good packaging and human gullibility.

I myself am often drawn to a product simply because it has a good design on the package. Things like orange juice, lemonade, or certain cereals are more attractive to me because the designer made the product look more desirable in whatever way they did. If I look at a product with a very bland, generic, design, I feel that the food, even though I KNOW a lot of it is produced/packaged in the same facilities, may not be as good. If there is a very small difference in price (say twenty cents) I am more liable to go for the better designed one, even if it were more expensive. Though there are limits of course.

In matters of movies and video games, people are more drawn to flashier and better designed covers or posters, etc, than those that look very bland. For example, the Dynasty Warriors series has very bland uninteresting covers and because of that, it plays a part in the series looking uninteresting to many people (amongst other things, though many gamers know not to judge a game by its cover anyway). Books also deal with the same thing, as the cover plays a significant factor in what an individual believes a series may be about or what they think the quality of the book is (lazier looking covers tend to be very unattractive and those that seem to try too hard to look interesting are also unattractive).